Kaya Genç is a novelist and essayist from Istanbul. His writing has appeared, mostly online but also in print, in The Paris Review, The Believer, The Guardian, Financial Times, the London Review of Books, Prospect, and Time, among others. Kaya is the Istanbul correspondent for The Believer and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and a contributing editor at Index on Censorship. He curated a book on Istanbul for American University in Cairo Press which will be out in 2015. Kaya is working on his first English novel. He is writing a history of Turkish literature for Harvard University Press and a book on “Angry Young Turkey” for I.B. Tauris.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
On the “demonic energy & radiance” of “Mustang”
Unlike it's reception in United States, "Mustang" has been divisive in Turkey...
Turkish Contemporary Art 2.0
Kaya Genç interviews contemporary Turkish artist Halil Altındere and writer Süreyyya Evren about "User’s Manual 2.0: Contemporary Art in Turkey 1975–2015."...
The Return of the Repressed
Arabic is one of the six most spoken languages in the world today, with more than 400 million people using one of its varieties....
Imagining the “Other”
Nazi propagandists instrumentalized and distorted Turkey for the political purposes of the Third Reich....
Turkey Under Western Eyes
"Turkish Awakening" attempts to move beyond an orientalist epistemology....
Murder Mysteries After the Death of the Author
That Sophie Hannah has managed to write a traditional Poirot novel is both the success and failure of this book....
Hercule Poirot and Us
Contributor Kaya Genç examines actor David Suchet's role as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot....
Crossing the Border of Fiction
Kaya Genç on Teju Cole...
The Sacred and Its Discontents: On Jenny White’s “Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks”
IN MARCH 2014, two weeks before mayoral elections, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) released a campaign ad on national ...
Surviving the Black Sea: An appreciation of David Stoliar, the sole survivor of the 1942 Struma disaster
A tribute to David Stoliar, the sole survivor of the 1942 Struma disaster....
The Embassy of Gossip: Zadie Smith’s First-Person Plural
First-person plural is the least used fictional POV, but it is necessary for political action — and both are steeped in gossip....
Auerbach in Istanbul
Erich Auerbach’s life in Istanbul, after escaping the Nazis, and his greatest work, "Mimesis"...
Such, Such Were the Miseries: Down and Out in Paris and London and Istanbul
Being down and out is a universal, timeless story. Just ask George Orwell....
Around the World: Jeremy Scahill’s “Dirty Wars,” Latin America’s Alfredo Jaar, and Istanbul’s Museum of Innocence
In this month's edition of "Around the World," Tom Gallagher examines Jeremy Scahill's book and just-released documentary film Dirty Wars: a ...
The Friends of the Museum
The Museum of Innocence is 500 days old; the things in the shops around it are older....
Turkey’s Glorious Hat Revolution
Wearing the wrong hat could get you killed....
Ali Kemal: Martyred Journalist and Iconic Traitor
In 1922, Ali Kemal, the great-grandfather of London’s mayor Boris Johnson, was lynched in Turkey. Ali Kemal was a journalist, not a dissident....
Ebooks v. Lattes
What would George Orwell choose: ebooks or lattes?...
Turkey Is Just a Thread That Ties All These Interesting Ideas Together
IN TURKEY, BÜLENT is not the first name that comes to mind when you want to establish a new ...
Listening to Vampire Weekend in Istanbul
From picaresque to modernist — a shift in the band's songwriting...
Outside the Zone: Searching for Sarai Sierra
On the killing of the 33-year-old amateur photographer...
Plebs and Chavs: On Textual Representation of Class
1. CLASS HAS ALWAYS BEEN a defining feature in English society. Politicians rarely admit this, often out of fear of the ...
Wilde in the Office
A hundred and twenty five years ago, Oscar Wilde edited a fashion magazine, his first and only office job. We have ...
BLARB BLOG POSTS
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Portnoy’s Complaint in Turkish
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Istanbul’s Libraries: A Refuge in Uncertain Times
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At Santa Maddalena
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The Pleasures of the Glimpse: On Dirk Braeckman at the Venice Biennale
